


Lesser Known Mating Habits of Tibetan Lycanthropes and Skinwalkers

by hit_the_books



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Betaed, Books, Gen, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy References, Humor, Men of Letters Bunker, Research, Tea, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-13
Updated: 2015-10-13
Packaged: 2018-04-26 06:50:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4994416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hit_the_books/pseuds/hit_the_books
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><a href="http://dreamsfromthebunker.tumblr.com/post/131112624445/hi-i-was-wondering-if-i-could-have-a-gen-sam">Anon requested</a>: <em>Hi! I was wondering if I could have a Gen! Sam fic? Maybe have it feature some research and funny books he finds along the way?</em></p><p>There's no doubt about it: the Bunker is full to the brim with weirdness and Sam's reminded of this each time he's forced to dive into the more esoteric volumes of the Men of Letters' book collection.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lesser Known Mating Habits of Tibetan Lycanthropes and Skinwalkers

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [Zeryx](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Zeryx/pseuds/Zeryx) for being my beta on this :)
> 
> And thank you to [fallintosanity](http://archiveofourown.org/users/yopumpkinhead/pseuds/fallintosanity) for several of the book title suggestions.

“Who needs a book on the ‘Lesser Known Mating Habits of Tibetan Lycanthropes and Skinwalkers’? Like, surely no one needs to know this. You know, I’m normally all for knowledge being written down and kept for future generations… But leather bound and printed on vellum for this? It’s too much. And, and… How do you get close enough for long enough to find this out? Just what did some Men of Letter legacy have to do in order to get this information in the first place?!”

“And this is why I am not weird for enjoying their vintage porn collection. Because that classic skin is the least bizarre of what’s kicking around in here.” Dean took a final swig from his beer bottle. “Listen, I’m gonna hit the hay. Don’t stress it if you don’t find anything Paddy’s lot in Tuscon can use.”

Sam nodded a reply, hands still flipping through the pages of the lycanthrope book. Dean rolled his eyes and strolled off. It wasn’t that Paddy was desperate for information, but something about a werewolf hunt he was working on had seemed off and Dean owed him a favor, which meant Dean called in a favor that Sam owed Dean.

Lesson here: don’t lose all the pool money when you’re five whiskies in and forget to get Dean so drunk that he does not remember that you helped him lose all of his cash.

“‘In the harsh mountain environment of Tibet, much of the lycanthrope community is scattered and packs are small. When the winter ice begins to melt, packs will---’ No, no this is not relevant. Close the book, Sam, close the book and step away.” And so Sam followed his own advice and allowed the leather bound tome to close. Stepping away from the leather topped desk, Sam stretched--his arms and neck creaking and snapping--and walked back over to the shelves he’d picked that last book up from.

Blinking his eyes, the lateness of the hour pulling on his body, Sam looked at the spines of the books gathered there. Everything pre-dated 1959, the Men of Letters having been destroyed in 1958. One spine did stand out, a curious one at that. There was no name, just initials: ‘H.G.G.’ in pink ink and the surface looked more like plastic than anything else.

Sam pulled the book down and looked at the cover. In big friendly pink letters it had the words ‘Don’t Panic’ and a small computer screen. Large hands fumbled with what was clearly not a book, but nothing happened. Sighing, Sam replaced the curio on the shelf, rather than put it in the trash.

“‘On the Care and Feeding of Narwhals’, wait what?” Sam glimpsed a title on a higher shelf. “Why would anyone from the Men of Letters need to know that?”

A more obscure cover caught his interest and Sam pulled down what was really just pieces of vellum loosely bound together in aged tanned leather. Opening up the hodge podge collection of pages, Sam was greeted by the what looked like runes in _old_ Irish. Slowly he sounded it out before translating it:

“‘The Helpful and Vindictive Natures of Clurichaun: Why Your Wine Cellar Needs One Now’. What in the…” The book was old, no doubt. Brought over from the Old World and written well before a time where that was even a phrase that had been in use. The gist of the pages Sam glimpsed was that Clurichaun were great for looking after your wine, but not so great if you didn’t look after them in turn. Sam carefully put the book back where he found it and kneeled down to look at some shelves he had not spent hours looking at previously.

A problem with this part of the Men of Letters collection was that between saving the world, themselves, friends, acquaintances and poor everyday Joes and Jos, this section had never been indexed by them. It was like the trolley a library would normally have, packed with tomes waiting to be reshelved where they belonged. Only the card system for the Letters’ collection was missing bits and pieces (lesson here: don’t trust Dean to tidy archival material for archival material) and so Sam had never really found good new homes for books like:

“‘When Bonnacons Attack’... I don’t think we want to know.” Sam returned the book and rubbed the back of his neck. He’d already exhausted the regularly shelved werewolf books in his hunt for what Paddy had described (a werewolf that seemed immune to silver and wasn’t an alpha).

Blinking hard, Sam stood up, legs creaking, and knew that he wasn’t going to get any more research done for the night. He would probably try going through Bobby’s old journal one more time in the morning, but he was at the stage where the words on the spines beside him were turning into jumbled messes.

Turning off the desk lamp, Sam’s feet moved on autopilot, directing him towards his room. His body was guessing it was night, of course, the eternal light of the Bunker’s underground world making it hard to tell the time of day. It could have been early morning by then--that was how long Sam felt he had been awake for. How tired his bones felt. He wasn’t getting any younger being a hunter and sometimes it embarrassed him just how much the idea of lying in a soft bed-- that was his own--filled him with anticipation and bliss.

Too tired to brush his teeth, Sam stumbled into his room and didn’t bother with a light. He closed the door and was only just awake enough to kick off his boots, drags his pants down and remove his plaid shirt. In the darkness and working on spatial memory, Sam crawled onto his bed and buried himself under his sheets and blanket and huffed his shaggy hair away from his face.

Sleep claimed Sam within moments and he slid down the tunnel into his dreams and found himself atop a Tibetan mountainside. Silver dagger hidden behind him as he tried to keep three werewolves--in human form--to his twelve, Sam had no idea how he had gotten there. His self remembering his dream self recalled a climb and then a sprint, but the dream memory was mostly a fog.

The dream Sam kept repeating, “The hairs of Tibetan lycanthropes are softer and better at trapping heat than their North American cousins… The hairs of Tibetan lycanthropes are softer and better at trapping heat than their North American cousins…” And he had no idea why. Before he had to slice at the dream werewolves, Sam was invited to a yurt for a cup of tea and he accepted their kind offer.

A short Tibetan woman, one of the werewolves, with a colourful quilted jacket sat beside Sam and said, “You’re lucky we have tea. So often we cannot find it when we need it.”

“You need to reorganize your supplies.”

“That’s what I keep telling my husband… I don’t suppose you know how we might protect our wine cellar?”

“You could get a Clurichaun?”

“A Clurichaun. Interesting… Now, where did I put the silverware? We can’t have tea with our guest without silverware.”

Lesson here: don’t read ‘Lesser Known Mating Habits of Tibetan Lycanthropes and Skinwalkers’ too close to going to bed unless you like drinking tea in your sleep.

Morning arrived on the heels of an alarm sounding off on Sam’s cell. The phone was in his jeans somewhere in the dark. Flipping on a lamp, Sam had to get out of bed in order to end the electronic din. Finding his jeans on the floor, Sam pressed a button on screen and the room was plunged into silence.

A shower, one set of fresh clothes and a coffee later, Sam was back at his favourite desk, flipping through Bobby’s old journal. Dean was sat across from him. It took half an hour of careful scanning of Bobby’s tightly written notes, but Sam found an instance the hunter had encountered a werewolf immune to silver, but his notes said that beheading still did the job.

The werewolf in question had been a burglar before becoming a werewolf and specialized in silverware. Bobby theorized that the beast’s previous proximity to the metal and having to clean items before selling them on had granted some kind of immunity to silver.

“Dean?”

Dean looked up from his laptop. “Shoot.”

“It’s happened before. Beheading still works.”

Pulling out his cell, Dean started writing a text for Paddy. “Good to know… or bad. Werewolves immune to silver? The job’s hard enough as it is.”

Sam closed Bobby’s journal and looked at the archive’s book shelves. “It was an odd mix of circumstances… Say, do you want to help me organize the books on the return shelves? I doubt they’ll ever be useful… but maybe we could order them from most likely to need to least likely to need?”

Dean groaned. “Really?”

“It’d help.”

“Right now?”

Getting up, Sam walked over to the shelves and Dean rolled his eyes before closing his laptop and following. Dean picked off the first book he saw, if you could call it a book, the way its pages had been assembled in loosely tanned leather.

“What is this?” Asked Dean, squinting at the runes.

“‘The Helpful and Vindictive Natures of Clurichaun: Why Your Wine Cellar Needs One Now’.”

“Sam do we even have a wine cellar?”

“I don’t know, but if we do, you better hope the Men of Letters didn’t leave a Clurichaun inside it.”

“Why?”

“There are no good vintages when you leave a Clurichaun unattended.”

Dean reshelved the book, but nearer the start of the shelves. “Still, sounds more useful than the mating habits of Tibetan werewolves.”

“They serve good tea though.”

Silence. Sam looked over at Dean to find his brother giving him his “wtf” face. “How do you even…”

“Don’t ask.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this, let me know :)
> 
> You can also find me over at [Dreams from the Bunker](http://dreamsfromthebunker.tumblr.com/).


End file.
